


How To Embrace A Swamp Creature

by bliumchik



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, Romantic Comedy, epic motts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-17
Updated: 2010-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 02:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bliumchik/pseuds/bliumchik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Previously titled INTERNS! Or: The Story Of How Gerard Is Awkward And Frank Is A Bit Of A Douche.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Embrace A Swamp Creature

**Author's Note:**

> Written for no_tags@LJ. This story kind of ran away with me, who knows why. I was all, “I can finish a thousand word story at the last minute!” and then it was like “o-ho! What if I want to be TWO THOUSAND WORDS?” and I was like “fuck fuck fuck.” So I posted it a little rough, but looking back I think it's okay! I can't figure out how to deal with that one tense shift, but uh... you probably wouldn't even have noticed that if I hadn't pointed it out *sweatdrops* er.

Frank Iero was pissed. And not in the good way, either, that would have to wait on the weekend’s crop of house parties (he paused to mentally shake a fist at the legal drinking age and the genes that meant he could still pass for fifteen) – no, Frank was working up a good old fashioned dark cloud of irritation, frustration and sheer bloody-minded rage. Bad enough that his mom insisted he take the voluntary internship in his first summer at college. Bad enough that one of his periodic bouts of pneumonia had caused him to miss the first round of sign-ups, landing him in this tiny boring firm for the summer assisting the assistant to the sub-head of a department whose actual purpose Frank, after two weeks of paper-fetching and coffee-mixing, was no closer to figuring out than he had been that first morning when his boss, Mr. Fischer, explained it in his perpetual close-mouthed mumble. (Frank had already mentally named him The Fish for his bulgey eyes and slightly dodgy smell.) As though to add insult to injury Gabe, his only real college friend so far, had fucked off to Spain for the summer, where he would undoubtedly have hot dancers and, and matadors and stuff constantly falling at his feet, while he, Frank, spent his week-days surrounded by balding middle-aged accountants, suspicious bespectacled receptionists and Garry (or possibly Jerry), his one fellow intern - a squirrelly kind of guy who looked like he’d last washed his hair approximately when Napoleon invaded Russia and generally gave Frank, who had been shoved into lockers throughout highschool, the urge to flush his head in a toilet. Mostly, he had to admit, in order to strip off the top layer of grease. But still.

“And he always brings these stupid sandwiches for lunch, with like weird fillings like anchovies or whatever, I don’t even know!” he tells the phone, idly fingering his guitar. “Who even eats anchovies?”

“Uhuh,” says Gabe. “Hey, you know that girl I told you about, Maria? So she’s got this friend that she sometimes makes out with, right?”

“Dude, you are so not even listening to me,” Frank says, rolling his eyes. He so does not want to hear about Gabe and lesbians, except for the way he totally does, but he’s still pissed at Gabe for abandoning him.

“I am totally listening, dude, you’re so alone blah blah, nobody will sell you alcohol blah, you’re still not getting laid so your subconscious is fixating on some geek you work with because he’s the only person under thirty who gives you the time of day, blah blah blah! Let me tell you about this thing she did with her tongue, dude!”

“I hate you,” says Frank, and hangs up. But then he hits redial, because he actually does want to hear about the thing Maria did with her tongue.

***

He’s not actually fixating on Jerry (or possibly Garry). For one thing that’s a stupid goddamn name, whichever one it is, and for another the dude takes about an hour to stammer out a sentence to anyone except the ladies at reception who have decided he’s an ugly duckling or something and sort of communally adopted him. Plus he keeps fucking up the Fish’s coffee because he’s distracted by a cool spiderweb or something. To be fair, the spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling above the coffee machine is pretty awesome, all Charlotte’s Web shit – the cleaner obviously can’t be bothered shifting the big iron caffeine-dispensing monstrosity in order to get a stool in there and remove the thing, and it’s built up to epic proportions, layer after layer of web and mummified mosquito, the fat smug spider squatting in the middle of it ominously like it’s considering making a move on the soy milk.

Still, it’s a fucking latte. They are not difficult.

“Dude!” Frank snaps his fingers in front of Jerry’s face. “You’ve put in too much milk again, hello, what are you doing.”

“Oh, uh,” Jerry says, looking down, “Shit, I mean, damn, I mean.”

Frank takes pity on him and grabs the cup. “Here,” he says, rolling his eyes. He drinks half of the milk so what’s left is in appropriate latte proportions. “There, I fixed it!”

Jerry looks faintly scandalised, but proceeds with the coffee-making.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, but Frank can actually see his mind wandering again.

“It’s still going to be a cool spiderweb when you’re _not_ mixing hot liquids, you know,” Frank reminds him.

“Oh, uh,” Jerry says again. “Sorry. I was just thinking how it’s kinda shaped like Starro, and spiders would actually make a more awesome mind-control alien than starfish, wouldn’t they? Like who is afraid of starfish, right?”

Frank blinks at him. “What?”

Jerry blinks back, looking appalled. “Starro? The DC villain…?”

Frank shrugs helplessly. Somehow Jerry’s puppy dog eyes have managed to make him feel vaguely apologetic for not recognising a _comic book character_ , what the hell?

“Oh my god,” says Jerry. “There is no way you know that little about comics. You are totally missing out, dude! Let me lend you some stuff!”

“Uh,” says Frank, trying to think of some way to get out of this without having to face that look across the break room every day. “…sure?”

Damn.

***

So now Frank has a pile of comic books shoved under his bed, and Jerry waving cheerfully at him in the hallways, which, okay, is actually kind of nice? Frank decides the isolation must be getting to him, making him pathetically grateful for someone just acknowledging his existence and seeming happy about it. He still goes to the parties on the weekend, but it’s not the same without Gabe – Frank doesn’t have either his height or his suggestive eyebrows, he gets lost in the crowd. The only real bright spot is going to gigs, getting into the moshpit and just going crazy, and that just doesn’t happen often enough.

Except now Jerry wants to have _conversations_ with him. About _Batman_. The extent to which Frank does not give a shit about Batman is only rivalled by the extent to which he does not give a shit about stamping endless piles of paperwork, so he lets the guy sit around near his desk and ramble on. Just Frank’s luck he’s discovered the one topic on which Jerry is pretty much capable of conducting a conversation all by himself, so all he needs to contribute is the occasional “mm.” After a while Jerry wants to loan him some more comics, so Frank brings back the others and sort of forgets to mention that he hasn’t actually read them.

Gabe doesn’t want to talk about anything that doesn’t make Frank bitter and a tiny bit turned on, which he doesn’t consider an excellent combination, so he ends up unloading all this onto some lanky kid at a party who he remembers making out with Gabe a few times. Technically this describes half the campus population, but Gabe had actually introduced them (not that Frank remembers the kid’s name, probably Max or Michael or something), so he figures he must be cool.

“What’s wrong with Batman?” asks the kid, frowning up at him through his long scraggly fringe. It’s a familiar look, and Frank is sort of horrified that he’s gotten used to Jerry’s mannerisms enough to see echoes of them in some stranger at a party.

“Are you kidding?” he snaps. “The guy dresses up in tights and stalks people!”

“Hmph,” says the kid.

***

The next Monday morning Jerry doesn’t come by to jabber on about comic books, for which Frank is kind of grateful as he’s got a killer hangover. He’s not in the breakroom at lunch though, and when he doesn’t show up by three Frank gets kind of worried that he’s been run over or something, because it’s not as though Fish would _tell_ him (although it’s entirely possible he did and Frank just thought he was being sent for another cup of coffee), and Jerry hasn’t got any other way to contact Frank because Frank changed the topic every time it seemed to be heading in an exchanging-numbers direction. In hindsight, that was possibly kind of a dick move. He decides he’ll wander over to Jerry’s desk and ask for his number, but then he realises that he’s not entirely sure where Jerry’s desk actually _is_.

Then Frank remembers Jerry’s weird friendship with the receptionists, so he waits for the Fish to take one of his regular cigarette breaks and heads down to the front desk.

“Oh, it’s you,” says the dumpy blue-haired lady on duty right now, sniffing at him.

“Hey, uh,” Frank surreptitiously checks her nametag. “Rhonda! You’re uh, looking good?”

She gives him a look reminiscent of the lioness that’s trying to make its mind up whether that particular gazelle is worth the effort.

Frank gulped. “I was just wondering if you’d seen, um, Jerry? Around?”

“Mmm, nope,” says Rhonda.

“Right,” says Frank. “Okay. Thanks, anyway, I guess.”

***

This new pattern continues throughout the week. Frank had not realised quite how boring this job was _without_ a persistent cheerful voice explaining the relative merits of Doom Patrol and the Invisibles to distract him from the goddamn filing. By the end of Tuesday he’s so bored he’s taken to claiming to take a toilet break and wandering the halls in the vague hope he’ll come upon wherever they’ve stashed Jerry. Frank’s own office is more or less a closet, so he could be anywhere. He avoids Reception, though, because he’s pretty sure those ladies are actually plotting his demise. By Thursday he has resorted to sneaking Jerry’s comics to work in his bag and actually reading them. He’s sort of horrified to find himself enjoying it, even a few of the ones with capes and tights, although he maintains that Batman is a creepy fuck, and he can’t stand Robin – or one of the Robins, he’s a little unclear on what’s going on there, but the one called Jason really gets on his nerves. Does he really have to be such a little dick to everyone all the time? God.

Also, Frank has discovered that Jerry’s name is actually Gerard. Gerard Way, it’s written in the front cover of some of the graphic novels he’s lent Frank. He is not sure how he managed to miss that earlier, and tries to figure out if he’s called the guy Jerry and how he’d reacted. By this point he’s decided that Jerry – Gerard – must have just gotten bored with Frank. People have done that before – in middle school he was sort of friends with this girl called Jamia. In fact he’d had a bit of a crush on her, did some embarrassing-in-retrospect pigtail pulling and all. She hadn’t even texted him to let him know her family was moving away. Still, it’s kind of depressing to get it from someone who would have been even lower on the high school totem pole than Frank had been.

All things considered Frank is ecstatic about the weekend. Okay, his strategy of getting exceedingly drunk and climbing on people hasn’t gotten him laid yet, and that guy he was talking to last time is glaring daggers at him whenever they run into each other, whatever is up with that, but it is still a vast improvement over his now-even-duller workplace. He is never doing a fucking internship _ever again_ , whatever his mom says.

Sunday afternoon when the timezones match up (and the hangover wears off) he calls Gabe. He figures at this point hearing about all the sex he’s not having can’t actually make things any worse, right?

“Frank, oh my god, it’s amazing. She’s amazing!” Gabe says dreamily.

“Oh god,” says Frank. It’s worse than that. He’s in love.

“You don’t understand, dude!” says Gabe. “She punched a guy in the face! In the _face_! Over a _poker game_.”

Frank sighs and flops onto his bed with a volume of Sandman. This one is his – Gerard had only lent him the first three before he got hit by a bus or decided he hated him or something, so he’d actually gone out and bought the next one.

“And then we had a threesome,” adds Gabe. “It was strip poker.”

“Mm,” says Frank.

***

The next Wednesday Frank is wandering the halls again – he’s sort of given up on finding Gerard (and why is the Department of Misc. Fuck-All so damn big anyway?) but it pretty much beats work. Then he turns a corner and walks into someone – and promptly falls over, because pretty much everyone is bigger and more coordinated than Frank. Or at least bigger, in this case, since the other guy’s on the floor as well.

“Frank,” he says, wide-eyed, ducking down under his lanky hair.

“Oh shit!” says Frank, scrambling onto his knees and over to Gerard. “Dude! I thought you got hit by a bus!”

“Um,” says Gerard. “You’re… hugging me.”

Frank realises that he is, in fact, hugging Gerard for the first time ever. He feels a bit ashamed – he’s normally kind of all over his friends.

“Seriously,” he says, letting go. “You didn’t even let me return your comics.”

“Whatever,” mumbles Gerard. “It’s not like you read them anyway.”

Frank gapes at him.

“Mikey told me,” Gerard adds. “You were bitching to him at that party about some nerd who keeps going on at you about comics.” He looks sort of… hurt, Frank realises with a pang, and he’d never meant for this to happen.

“Wait a sec, Mikey?” he asks, confused.

“My brother.” Gerard glares.

Oh shit. Mikey _Way_ , he remembers now – Frank has got to start getting better at remembering names.

“Gerard.” Frank says desperately. “I’m really, I seriously, I am so sorry.”

“Mm,” says Gerard, getting up and dusting himself off. “Well, I’ll see you around.”

“Wait!” says Frank, jumping up and promptly banging his knee on a pot plant. “Ow! Fuck!”

“Shit, are you all right?” asks Gerard, concerned, before apparently remembering that he hates Frank now and looking conflicted.

“Shit fuck balls,” says Frank. “I bet whoever gave Wolverine healing powers was exactly as clumsy as me, ow.”

Gerard frowns. “Last time I talked to you about Wolverine you thought he was the one in the wheelchair.”

Frank shrugs. “I read your comics.”

“Oh,” says Gerard.

“And I remembered your name,” Frank says.

“Oh,” says Gerard.

“And.” He’s pretty much out of evidence in his favour, by this point. “And you were totally wrong, the Corinthian is absolutely more creepy than the Swamp Thing. The Swamp Thing is actually kind of cute.”

Gerard starts to smile.

“At least let me return your comics,” says Frank.

“I’ll lend you some new ones,” says Gerard.


End file.
